Gun Store Employees Stop Mental Patient Plotting Mass Murder

We’ve noted repeatedly that the mass killings we have in this country are primarily the result of a mental healthcare system that has shrunk the capability to handle in-patient treatment to absurd levels, leaving the dangerously mentally ill on the street where they are ticking time bombs just waiting to explode.

A dangerously mentally ill man in Austin, Texas, apparently agrees with that assessment.

He went to Michael Cargill’s gun store in hopes of buying a gun to shoot up the mental hospital that refused to treat him:

“Before he fills out the paperwork, he tells me ‘You know what…I want a gun. I want this Sig. I want to make sure you guys have the ammunition for it. And I’m gonna go over there to that hospital and I’m going to shoot everyone in that hospital,” Cargill said.

That’s when Cargill presses the silent alarm.

“I’m gonna be back here in about an hour. I need 500 rounds of ball, 500 rounds of wadcutter, 500 rounds of the ones that explode. I’m gonna need some training rounds…(inaudible) you can shoot people with those and they’re fine,” the man said.

Cargill says he deliberately tried to keep the man there until police arrived.

According to Cargill, the man claimed he worked for the FBI.

Austin police officers eventually peek into the front door and Cargill signals them to come in…pointing to the man.

Officers detain him.

“That’s when I found out that he actually was at the hospital earlier that day. He had a hospital band on and they’d released him from the hospital because they didn’t have enough beds in the psych ward,” he said.

Sadly, it took publicly plotting felony homicide in front of responsible gun shop employees for this seriously mentally ill man to get started down the road to mental health care that he obviously desperately needs.

Hopefully this time the hospital won’t reject him again.

Owner Michael Cargill and the staff of Central Texas Gun Works helped avoid a tragedy and get a mentally ill man the treatment he needed.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com.
Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun.
He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.
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